3 Months Old

Leyna turns 3 months old today!

She is finally out of her colicy stage and becoming a happier baby everyday! She smiles a lot and is always "talking" to us. It's so fun to see these stages develop and to hear her sweet voice. We never got to hear Hailey "talk" and she only smiled once, the day of her Glenn surgery. It really is amazing to watch her grow and learn, I love this little girl SO MUCH! I just wish she was able to meet her big sister.
She still does not like to be put down at all though, but I am not really complaining. I am sure in a few months she will want to spend all her time on the floor playing with her toys and less time in my arms. The only thing we're having a hard time with is tummy time. She refuses to be put on her tummy, she just screams her head off. So if anyone has any good advice how to get their little ones to actually enjoy tummy time, I would appreciate it!

Sisters by Heart is continuing its mission to inspire and support newly-diagnosed HLHS families.

With your help, we can reach more families and spread the word that a diagnosis of HLHS is not the end, but just the beginning of a life-changing and rewarding journey.

Our children, both survivors and angels, bring us HOPE for the future of HLHS. Please, share our message so that we may continue to reach out to those in need.

2 Months old

Leyna turned 2 months old on Friday! She had a great doctor appt, and is at 12lbs 1oz and 23 inches. She's in the 75th percentile for weight and lenght. She's got her daddy's genes for height that's for sure!

She also got her vaccines and did really well. Only cried for a little bit and was fine for a few hours. But she didn't have a very good night. Woke up crying a lot. But a little Tylenol helped with that.

Here is our gorgeous girl at 2 months!

SMILE!

Leyna started smiling on March 10th. She gave her first real smile to her cousin Andrea. And I finally caught one on camera!

Also, please keep Jenny and her daughter Aly in your prayers. Aly is only a few weeks older than Hailey and Jenny and I found out around the same time about our daughters diagnosis. We've been following each other since before our daughters were born.
Aly will be having her fontan surgery tomorrow and could use lots of prayers for a fast and safe recovery.
http://www.alyjeansspecialheart.com/

Almost 8 weeks old!

I know I haven't posted much in almost 2 months, but it's hard for me to even check my facebook let alone write a blog! This girl sure keeps me busy! She is a very very needy baby who wants to be held 24/7 (she happens to be in my arms now a I type this with only one hand.)Life sure has been interesting though. She went through a very fussy and unhappy stage for about 3 weeks and with lots of trial and error we figured out she has a milk protein allergy. So we are giving her breast milk and supplementing a bit with formula because I'm not making enough for her (her jaundice made her a very lazy eater in the beginning so not much milk came in)So she is now on my milk and a soy based formula.
She has been growing so fast too, already at 11 pounds. I can't wait to see how big she is at her 2 month appt next Friday. I'm not looking forward to her having her vaccines, but it needs to be done.
Other than that, not much going on. Just lots of eating pooping and sleeping (well not much sleeping I guess!).
Well someone is getting fussy, so I will try and post a few pictures for you all to enjoy. One of these days that she lets me put her down, I will post a longer update. But for now this is all I can do! I don't know how so many of you post so much after having a baby, I can't do it!

One of my favorites

Just took this one today.

A week old!

Tomorrow Leyna will already be a week old! What a week it has been too.
While we were in the hospital with her, Hailey's primary care nurse, Louise came in to meet Hailey's little sister. What a very special moment that was! Louie is such a wonderful nurse and a really great person. She was at Leyna's baby shower as well.
Here she is holding our sweet girl.

We were released from the hospital on January 21st. It felt so great to put her in that car seat and walk out the door with her. We waited so long to do that with Hailey and never got to. It was like a dream as we left the hospital and then got in the car to drive HOME! It's another day that I will always remember.
Here she is the day before we were released. We call this her "Milk Drunk" picture :-)

Unfortunately Leyna was discharged with a small case of jaundice that we were told would get better on it's own. Well we went to her follow up appointment today and her level had risen quite a bit. The nurse made a call to Leyna's pediatrition (who we haven't even met yet!) and he wanted to do a blood draw (they had been using some thing to scan her forhead before)to get an acurate reading of her jaundice level. So we headed over to the clinic across the street and got her blood and then we went home to wait for the results.

Leyna on her way home from the doctor.

About an hour later we get an urgent call that she needs to go over to the hospital as soon as possible to be admitted and placed under the billi lights. I started crying my eyes out after that phone call. We have to bring our daughter to be admitted to a hospital. Didn't we just go through this??? Why?? Now I know, it's just jaundice and it's a simple thing to fix but just the thought of being in a hospital again was horrible.
We got there and they took her back to draw some blood and set her up under the light. The first blood draw came back clotted so they had to draw another one. Poor Leyna just screamed! And I cried! But they finally got all the blood they needed. The first 15 min of being there was horrible. They have all the same alarms that the hospital Hailey was in had and they kept going off. And then there was talk about a possible feeding tube in case she wasn't able to eat the ammount they needed her to. All this was bringing back a rush of emotions and memories and I just couldn't stop crying. But then the Doctor comes in and she said they ran the blood twice and her Jaundice level was only at 18 (the other clinic reported it to be 22.5) So at 18 she could technically go home for treatment. But since we were already there and set up, it was decided that we just spend the night and get rid of this jaundice now and go home in the morning. So here I am writing this from a hospital room while I watch my daughter sunbathe from across the room.

So we should be going home tomorrow morning after they check her level one more time. I will update again once we are home. But I will leave you with a cute picture of our beautiful new daughter asleep on grandpa's shoulder.

Oh yeah, THE PACKERS ARE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!! YEAH!!
There will be pictures of Leyna in her Packer gear coming soon!

She's Here!!

Leyna was born yesterday morning at 10:15am. She is 8 pounds even and 19 and a half inches long. She's so beautiful!! Havent slept much though because all she does is cry if we're not holding her, I'm sure not complaining though!!

At the hospital

We're currently at the hospital getting ready to meet Leyna! We went in for our normal NST this morning and I had been having a bad headache since last night so they checked my blood pressure and it was pretty high. So they are concerned about preeclampsia. Urine and blood tests came back okay, but headache and blood pressure are still a problem.
So now we are in the Labor and Delivery unit on the monitors waiting to hear if they want to do the C-section tonight or tomorrow morning!! Either way, we will be meeting Leyna in less than 24 hours!

More Ultrasound pictures

We are now having doctor appointments twice a week until we meet our beautiful little girl. Every Monday we have Non Stress Tests and every Thursday we will be having an ultrasound.
Leyna passed her NST with flying colors this past Monday and then today her ultrasound looked great. Her amniotic fluid is still on the high side but it's the high side of normal. So nothing to worry about.
Here are a couple of the pictures we got today, just look at these chubby cheeks!!!

Hailey Video

I just wanted to share a video a CHD survivor made for us a few months ago. It's a beautiful video with lots of photos of our Angel.